“Red … what of Ari?”
He sighed inwardly and turned to face the water again. The truth was he had been unable to face Ari because she looked so much like Sala. After his initial anger had cooled, he realized that he did not blame Ari for what had happened. Sala had foolishly jumped into the situation because she read the situation wrong and lost her cool at the sight of Ari in White’s clutches. And in her foolishness, she’d left him and Ari alone without her.
Ari.
Red frowned, trying to ignore his growing fatherly concern and feelings of shame—as though he had abandoned her these last few months, when she was never supposed to be his to abandon.
He hit out at his other concern instead. “The boy will grow old and die. What then?”
Glass turned, leaning against the low wall to face him. His gaze was searching and forever patient. “There are ways around that.”
Red jerked back in shock. Fear followed. Fear that his brother, his one true friend, would even think of making himself so vulnerable. “You wouldn’t dare.”
His brother grew sad but it was sorrow tempered with time and with the healing properties of what Red feared was love. It couldn’t be love. “I didn’t with Tamir because of the danger Lilif posed, but she is no longer with us, and no one else would dare try to kill us.
No one is powerful enough. Trey would be immortal and protected.”
Incredulous, Red shook his head.
“And you would have sacrificed a piece of yourself to gain him that.”
“I will not lose him. Not like Tamir.”
“But you loved Tamir.”
His brother stared at him.
Red sighed, closing his eyes, his worry now tenfold. “You’ve only been with him for a little over two months.”
“You loved Sala in one glance.”
It was fruitless to argue with him.
Glass did not give his affection easily. If he said he loved Trey, then he meant it. And Red unfortunately believed him. He should’ve known the moment he met Trey that he would capture Glass’s attention. The young man was charismatic, irreverent, and full of life. He was like Tamir in many ways. And like Tamir he was a burning soul of energy and light, a light that Glass, with his grave demeanor and weighty responsibilities, found soothing to his own soul, a balm against the dark.
Still, what Glass was proposing was a commitment he could never back out of. “Think on it a little longer, brother.”
“I will.”
Silence fell between them and together they stared out over the still water. Red wondered if his brother was also wishing that life could be as calm as the Aegean was today. But no. There was always some catastrophe on the horizon. Lately that catastrophe was his other brother, the White King. And “lately” had lasted centuries. He wanted to hate him. A part of him did. But their bond as the Seven Kings of Jinn, the connection that tethered them together and to the world, kept the hatred from growing into something unmanageable, into something like vengeance. He may not be able to make White pay for killing Sala, but Red would certainly make sure White never got what he wanted.
“White is tearing through Mount Qaf looking for Mother’s remains.”
“He does realize that could take him a thousand years or more?”
“He can be patient when he wants to be.”
Glass grunted in agreement and turned, his large hand coming to rest on Red’s shoulder. “Will you speak with Ari?”
Ari.
Sala.
Pain.
Red nodded reluctantly, willing the ache out of his chest as he thought about facing the physical reminder of all he’d lost. “In a few days.”
4
Expecting the Moon and Getting the Sun
“Should I tell her?” Jai asked Michael, his voice hushed with the weight of what he was asking, with the need for direction from a man older and more experienced than he was.
When Michael called, Jai could hear in his voice that something was up. Upon Michael’s arrival at the house, Jai’s suspicions were confirmed when he saw Michael’s face.
The Guild believed Charlie Creagh was back in town. It wasn’t because he’d used magic. It was because his picture had been passed around the entire Roe Guild and two of them thought they’d seen Charlie in the neighborhood. He’d been coming out of the mall on Mount Holly Road. Before the two Hunters had time to blink, they’d lost sight of him.
Now everyone was on alert. Except Ari, who had no clue.
In an effort to beat back the aggravation and uncertainty he felt over his and Ari’s relationship, as well as expel the frustration that Ari would probably have to confront Charlie very soon, Jai had spent the entire day in training. Ari hadn’t stopped by at all, which meant she was avoiding him too.
Why she was avoiding him, Jai could only guess.
Why he was avoiding her? For a number of reasons, Charlie not the least of them. The truth was Jai had been worried for days about her and the growing distance between them. She’d been snapping at him, throwing him fake smiles, and generally frustrating the hell out of him. He had no clue what was going on with her and would admit only to himself that he was starting to panic. Buried deep somewhere inside him was the worry that Ari’s feelings for him weren’t real—that they were born of fear of being alone, and born from feeling safe with him. When she’d started pulling away, Jai worried that she’d finally realized the truth of that.
However, that was until this morning.
In the kitchen.
That nightie.
Damn, that nightie. It was like she was deliberately trying to kill him. But at least the nightie had cleared things up a little bit.
Ari thought he wasn’t hot for her because he hadn’t slept with her yet.
Jai couldn’t believe it. Part of him felt like a damn idiot for not putting two and two together. The other part of him resented the fact that being a good guy had suddenly made him a bad guy.
Hell, did she not know what kind of willpower it took to walk away from her?
They had a lot to talk about.
Starting with Charlie.
Michael stared back at him with masculine sympathy. He’d come down to the gym to tell Jai how late it had gotten. “I try to never keep anything from my wife. I learned fast that secrets come back to bite you in the ass.”
Jai sighed heavily, stepping back from the punching bag. “I don’t want her in the middle of this.”
“She’s already in the middle of this. You can’t protect her from that. Plus, you’re the one person she trusts in this whole world. Don’t take that away from her.”
Feeling a rush of fierce protectiveness, Jai nodded gratefully at Michael. Michael and Caroline had to be two of the strongest people he’d ever met. The loss of their daughter, Fallon, still hung heavy in the air, in their eyes and even in the almost drugged movements of their bodies. Yet they carried on protecting everyone and taking time to help out. Jai didn’t know how he could ever repay Michael for letting him start his life over again away from the incredibly poisonous influence of his so-called family.
Knowing Michael wouldn’t want thanks, Jai clapped him on the shoulder as he passed and steeled himself to return home to Ari to figure it all out.
Jai walked into the low-lit sitting room, his heart beating a little faster than usual. Trey would laugh at him if he were here to see Jai Bitar of the great Bitar Ginnayes anxious and nervous about facing a girl. Not just any girl, though, he reminded himself. The girl he loved.
Ari sat in the armchair near the large window, only the table lamp beside her illumination against a darkening sky. Her long legs were draped over the chair’s arm and she watched him warily, her book now closed on her lap.
He hated the uncertainty in her expression.
“We need to talk.” To his surprise, he saw her mouth tremble as she nodded, gracefully bringing her feet to the floor. Her eyes were wide and wounded, and Jai cursed. “Dammit, Ari, don’t look at me like that.”
He saw a flash of anger as her spine straightened and he immediately felt better at the sight of her fire.
“Like what?”
“Like I just killed your cat.”
“I don’t have a cat,” she sniffed haughtily.
He rubbed a hand over his close-cropped hair and sat on the sofa nearest her, his eyes boring into her very angry ones. “Why do I feel like I’ve been a bad guy for days now? I don’t even know what I’ve done except be a gentleman.”
Ari stared at him incredulously. He had a feeling he was about to get another lesson on the mysterious female psyche. “For two months, Jai? Look, I appreciate you giving me my own room and letting me know that you weren’t pressuring me into anything. But stretching it into two months of nothing but kisses and a patronizing nod to tell me it was my bedtime is not about me. It’s about you and what Michael and everyone else here thinks about you. About what you think about you. I get it.” She stood, face flushed with frustration. Jai felt his own blood heat at her accusation.
“You’re Jai Bitar. Honorable, responsible, guardian Ginnaye. God forbid he ever sleep with his eighteen-year-old girlfriend!”
“Ari, stop.”
“No.” She huffed. “Do you know how bad you made me feel about myself? Do you know how worried I was that you thought this was a mistake?”
“You?” Jai snapped. “What about me?
Rather than tell me this stuff, you treated me like crap. I thought you thought it was a mistake.”
But he might as well have stayed quiet. She was on a roll. “And it’s not just the sex thing. You don’t talk to me.”
Well, that was the biggest load of BS he’d ever heard. “Bullshit.”
“I ask you about your dad. What he did to you … and you shut me down.”
“You asked me if I was okay with it, and I told you I was.”
“But you’re clearly not.”
He squeezed his eyes closed, willing himself not to lose his cool with her. “I think I remember telling you when we first met that when a guy says he’s fine, he means he’s fine!” So much for keeping his cool.
“Don’t shout at me!”
Disbelieving at the insensible, illogical fight unfurling out of control, Jai grimaced. She was shouting at him. “You’re nuts.”
Definitely the wrong thing to say.
Hurt settled into her features before she drew herself up. “Thanks for the talk. Dick.”
She moved to hurry past him but Jai wasn’t done. Frustration, longing, lust, love, anger, it all mingled together in a need to have her see the truth. In a need to just … have her.
His arm shot out quick as lightning, his hand curling around her bicep as he yanked her down over him. He fell back against the sofa cushions, rearranging her as she huffed and fussed so that she was straddling his lap. She tried to bat away his hands but he grabbed her wrists, restraining her so she was pressed flush against him, their faces not even an inch apart. Jai stared into her unusual eyes, eyes that searched his frantically. “Did we make a mistake, Jai?” she whispered, her breath teasing his lips. “Did we move too fast?”
He let go of her wrists to smooth his hands down her slender hips, pulling her closer. Ari’s breath hitched, her hands coming to rest on his chest. It was rising and falling a little more quickly than normal, and she could probably feel his heart slamming against her palm. “I think we’re new at this. And I think we need to start talking to each other.”
“You’re not really much of a talker.”
Jai grunted in acknowledgement and brushed a soft kiss across her mouth. Bad idea. His mouth tingled and his skin prickled with heat. At the second hitch in Ari’s breath, he knew she felt it too. “Then I’ll start.” He pulled back a little so he could look into her face, so that she could look into his and see the sincerity there. “You’re right.
